Science in the Kitchen. eBook

Children are not likely to crave candy and other sweets
unless a taste for such articles has been developed
by indulgence in them; and their use, since they are
seldom taken at mealtime, helps greatly to foster
that most pernicious habit of childhood—­eating
between meals. No food, except at their regular
mealtimes, should be the universal rule for children
from babyhood up; and although during their earliest
years they require food at somewhat shorter intervals
than adults, their meal hours should be arranged for
the same time each day, and no piecing permitted.
Parents who follow the too common practice of giving
their little ones a cracker or fruit between meals
are simply placing them under training for dyspepsia,
sooner or later. Uninterrupted digestion proceeds
smoothly and harmoniously in a healthy stomach; but
interruptions in the shape of food sent down at all
times and when the stomach is already at work, are
justly resented, and such disturbances, if long continued,
are punished by suffering.

The appetite of a child is quite as susceptible of
education, in both a right and wrong direction, as
are its mental or moral faculties; and parents in
whose hands this education mainly rests should give
the subject careful consideration, since upon it the
future health and usefulness of their children not
a little devolve. We should all be rulers of
our appetites instead of subject to them; but whether
this be so or not, depends greatly upon early dietetic
training. Many a loving mother, by thoughtless
indulgence of her child, in season and out of season,
in dainties and tidbits that simply serve to gratify
the palate, is fostering a “love of appetite”
which may ruin her child in years to come. There
are inherited appetites and tendencies, it is true;
but even these may be largely overcome by careful
early training in right ways of eating and drinking.
It is possible to teach very young children to use
such food as is best for them, and to refrain from
the eating of things harmful; and it should be one
of the first concerns of every mother to start her
children on the road to manhood and womanhood, well
trained in correct dietetic habits.

TABLE TOPICS.

“The wanton taste
no flesh nor fowl can choose,
For which the grape
or melon it would lose,
Though all th’
inhabitants of earth and air
Be listed in the glutton’s
bill of fare.”

—­Cowley.

Jean Jacques Rousseau holds that intemperate
habits are mostly acquired in early boyhood, when
blind deference to social precedents is apt to
overcome our natural antipathies, and that those who
have passed that period in safety, have generally
escaped the danger of temptation. The same
holds good of other dietetic abuses. If a child’s
natural aversion to vice has never been wilfully perverted,
the time will come when his welfare may be intrusted